Deadmau5 Calls Out Calvin Harris & Praises Daft Punk [Interview]

It’s no secret that Deadmau5 loves video games. Apart from his own Diablo III livestreams and enviable character rankings, his roots in the gaming world run deep to the days of Super Nintendo.

The Mau5 recently cruised through New York City for a live streamed bout of Black Ops III, and afterwards, sat down for an impromptu interview with Rolling Stone’s Nick Murray where he had more than a couple things to say regarding music’s state of affairs.

Read on for a few highlights about Deadmau5′ thoughts on selling out, innovation, and his life-long relationship with games, and click here for the full interview.

First off, deadmau5 believes that his love for video games and passion for making music run side by side – there would be none without the other. He’s been a gamer for basically his whole life, as well as a music maker, so this isn’t a particular surprise. He’s even done some motion capture stuff for DJ Hero.

Rolling Stone also brought up the topic of retirement, likely because of the recent news surrounding Avicii. When RS asking deadmau5 if retiring was a possibility though, Joel’s response was a firm “no.”

“No, no. Never. No. Because I owe it to my fans to tour. If I wanted to just cash out and do my own thing and go ride ATVs for the rest of my life, then I’d just cash the fuck out and stop spending money in the music and show up to festivals with a couple of USB sticks, stick ’em in the player and just make money like a fucking madman. I’d be Calvin fuckin’ Harris. But that’s not what I want to do.”

He goes on to talk about how one of his goals is to set a precedent in dance music, much like Daft Punk did with their pyramid at Coachella. In our opinion though, the debut of his Cube at Coachella four years later was somewhat of a sequel to that moment, an example of excellent stage production and design and something that fans are still talking about.

“I can count that on one hand, how many times those things have happened, across the fucking span of music. That’s my goal: to be the guy who unveils that crazy fucking thing that people saw and then tour it a little while so we can share it with everyone else.”